Repercussions and Rebirth
by La Flamingo
Summary: Noah Vosen has been a sore loser ever since he was five years old and had his butt kicked by his four year old sister at Tic Tac Toe. PostUltimatum musings.
1. Sore Loser: Noah Vosen

**A/N: **Because this is fun. And my muse is bored. And sometimes it's fun to just ponder 'what if?' Three (maybe more) looks at what happens after _Ultimatum _ends. Vosen, then Paz, and then Nicky. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** Property of Universal Studios. I'm just a frightening fan-girl.

* * *

Noah Vosen has been a sore loser ever since he was five years old and had his butt kicked by his four-year-old sister at Tic-Tac-Toe.

He may not realize it now, seated uncomfortably in a cheap plastic chair while a Congressman glowers at him over jowly cheeks, but it's true.

His little sister told him he was mean when he was six after he pushed her in the sandbox (she pointed out that his castle was collapsing).

His mother told him he needed to stop bullying other boys when he was ten.

His girlfriend told him he needed to pick his fights better when he was sixteen (her boy _friend _waved in the hallways. Noah beat the shit out of him).

And his ex-wife told he was an immature, low-lying bastard when he was thirty-one.

Noah remembers Landy's look disbelief when (frustrated with being duped, being played by an SOB who should've been _dead_) he issues the kill order, and remembers his own feeling of violation when Bourne calls him from his cell to inform him that he's been played.

He remembers when Landy, chin high and eyes defiant, tells him he better find himself a damn good lawyer.

And then suddenly Noah Vosen is back in the present, and from across the floor the Congressman looks down over the bridge of his glasses at Noah and asks him, almost rhetorically: "You don't take losing very well, do you?"

No, sir, he doesn't.


	2. Isn't Asked: Paz

**A/N: **Since names usually weren't mentioned in this film, here's a good idea for you--Paz is the big poo-bah assassin. The project following Treadstone. The guy at Waterloo.

* * *

They pull Paz back from the top of the building, walk him down to the Induction Hall and tell him to go home. One of the men eyes him almost critically, as if checking for cracks or leaks, but Paz gives away nothing.

He is Blackbriar. He is untouchable.

They don't mention the man who just leapt ten stories to nothing, and he doesn't mention the target's last words. They all go home to their respective homes and houses to file their paperwork and their lies and nothing more is said than that.

But Paz is Blackbriar.

And Blackbriar starts thinking. He doesn't tell them anything (though chances are, his position is to be terminated soon), but he begins to evaluate what's going on around him and what his gut's telling him.

Blackbriar has a feeling that Cain is still alive.

Well? Maybe not.

But alive?

Most certainly.

Paz drives his car down below the main building and carefully walks down to the shore of the Hudson.

It's dark, and he can barely see anything above the circle of the flashlight, but Paz crouches down next to the lapping waves of the Hudson and notices a pair of wet footprints and blood.

He knows who it is. He doesn't even need to think about it.

But Paz – Paz doesn't instantly go into hunter-mode, evaluating where Cain could've gone, vanished and how fast he can get to him.

Instead, Paz cleans up the site.

He finds a bucket, dumps water all over the footprints.

He makes sure the blood has diluted, bled back down into the river from whence it came.

He sprays some ammonia (yes, he carries everything in his little black-bag) over the area.

And then Paz carefully walks back to his car, turns off the flashlight, and gets in.

Paz pauses a moment.

Smiles.

And then drives off.

When he is asked about the position of his target the next morning, Paz informs his superior confidently that the target is dead.

They don't ask him about it twice.


	3. Coffee: Nicky Parsons

The bus ride was hell, even though he told her that everything would get easier with time. 

Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn't. The man with no memory was telling her that it got easier with time. Nicky didn't know if she could really believe that.

But she tried. Lord knows, she tried.

It's only when she's in Denver (holed up in DIA after a blizzard flew in), sipping at a cup of black coffee and watching the news that suddenly things begin to ease up.

The anchorwoman informs the audience of sixteen (all drinking their coffee in that little café, staring out the window at the white blanket around them) that David Webb's body has yet to be found.

The crowd around Nicky Parsons murmurs, some nervously and others in mild surprise.

But the realization hits Nicky and slowly she smiles.

Another sip of the coffee.

It doesn't seem to churn in her gut anymore.

* * *

**A/N: **So, um...any requests? 


	4. Sunday Night Football: Tom Cronin

**A/N:** Puisque **Darlian **est fabuleux, Tom Cronin mérite le temps dans le projecteur et c'est vraiment amusement à continuer. Et parce que je peux.

(Yes, I used a translator, but my French is awful if I'm not in school. And I don't want to humiliate myself.)

* * *

Robert looks up at his Daddy when they're sitting on the couch together, watching Sunday (because those bastards at ESPN took Monday) Night Football, and asks him: 

"Why do you look tired?"

Daddy glances down at Robert and says nothing for exactly ten seconds.

During this time, the Broncos quarterback finds himself pulverized by the Patriot defense and one of the linebackers receives a foul for elbowing the guy tailing him. The game--held in Denver, the wind and snow fusing into an awfully cold, wet mess--finds itself up in arms as Bronco fans roar their disapproval.

The ref, tight-lipped, remains adamant.

And Robert, still looking up at his father quizzically, calls his name.

"Daddy?"

Tom shakes his head, pulling out of his reverie, and hugs his six-year-old son closer, kissing the top of his head.

"Work makes Daddy tired," he says after a minute, still watching the t.v. screen although his mind is elsewhere. "Work makes Daddy very, very tired."

Robert blinks for a moment, considering this, and then asks:

"Why don't you just quit?"

Tom's pause is a lot longer, then.


	5. The Funeral: Simon Ross

Over one-thousand people came to mourn the murder of Simon Ross.

And Elizabeth Newton could've sworn she recognized almost every single one of them.

Some faces she knew better than others, true, but in every single person Elizabeth saw someone or something that she had seen before.

There was the lawyer.

The cop. (The baker)

And the bum... (The candlestick maker).

And every single one of them were all connected by one man. One tenuous thread amid the billions that made up the knot of the universe.

Elizabeth Newton appreciated moments like that, moments when she realized how small and truly insignificant she was. Most people would have found that knowledge depressing but then, Elizabeth wasn't most people.

Simon had known that. It was why they became such good friends, and why–when he needed help with his stories and vice versa–they made a terrific reporting duo. It was a friendship and only a friendship, but Elizabeth came damn close to calling it family.

He was the brother that wasn't killed in a car crash when she was sixteen.

And she was the sister who hadn't disappeared in Italy after Simon dug up something he shouldn't have.

The procession was a sad ordeal, and it took all of Elizabeth's reserves not to break down, bawling, like Simon's mother.

She watched the woman, keening softly next to her son's casket, and only wished that she knew why he had been murdered. Why he had been shot in the head and then left there-- brains oozing onto tile–at Waterloo.

There were dozens of hypothesis, sure, but Elizabeth found it hard to believe most of them. There were one or two that seem more likely to her, (the man Simon had been trying to find killed Simon in an effort to keep him quiet, or that the Americans muted him because he messed with the CIA) but everything else seemed preposterous

Elizabeth Newton was one of the last people to reach the casket. After the men and women in black (crows without their roosts, birds seeing death dancing before their eyes and unwilling to acknowledge it) walked by and nodded their last to Simon, she stepped forward and laid down her gifts to the dead one.

There was a subway token.

And a £500 fountain pen that had been given to her (by him) after her promotion to head editor of the Eastern European quadrant of _The Guardian. _

Elizabeth laid these gifts down gingerly on the casket, biting her lip to keep from bursting into tears, and then took a step back.

Stepping on the toes of the person behind her.

A smothered exhalation of surprise, and a look back to see who she had stepped on found Elizabeth Newton staring into the eyes of someone who she didn't recognize.

"Sorry," she said.

"No worries," the man said.

Exchanges are brief at funerals – and no one really minds. If you step on someone's toes, accidently bump or nudge someone on your way out, an apology is all that is needed.

Everything else is understood.

Or so Elizabeth thought.

She was halfway down the hill, handkerchief clutched in her right hand, when she stopped and looked back at the casket resting on the hill.

The man was still there, staring down at it.

It was only when Elizabeth got a little further that she realized the man spoke with an American accent.

Elizabeth Newton spun around.

But the man was gone.

* * *

**A/N: **Elizabeth Newton was a made-up character of my imagination. So I DO own something!! Mwah-ha-ha-ha... 


	6. Heartstrings: Martin Kreutz

_"She's dead." _

He sits in his chair for a long time after that, a long time after Bourne (_the bastard, _a part of his mind whispers, furious) leaves and the sky gets dark and slowly cold begins to creep into the flat.

He sits there for hours, maybe days, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing and only trying to figure out what he's supposed to _feel _and hating the emptiness that seems to wallow within him–a bucket over an empty well.

Finally, though, when he feels something pull at his heart--playing with the aorta valve and toying with blood flow_–_ does he realize what he must do.

Martin Kreutz woodenly leans forward in his chair, grabbing at his cello and carefully bringing it back to him. He cradles the bow in his right hand while his left grips the neck resolutely and exhales, closing his eyes.

The bow hair falls on its own accord between the fingerboard and the bridge.

And it is then that Martin Kreutz, tears flowing silently down his face, begins to play.

The neighbors would tell their friends and family later that they had never heard such sad, beautifully raw music in all of their lives.

* * *

**A/N: **Ah, how the muse is fickle and tempermental and yet...(sometimes) brilliant!

I owe most of these later stories to the great and precise reviews of **lazaefare** and **Some Random Reviewer **as well as the super-enthusiastic **Darlian. **She calls me an energetic beaver. I think I might actually change it to my pen name. ;D

Thank you for your reviews. They're going to certainly contribute to what will be coming later.

Love,

LF


	7. Sleepy Time: Dr Albert Hirsch

**A/N: Darlian**, Darlian, you are a dear. :)

I'm going Albert Hirsch, now. Because he scares me.

* * *

He's always thought that sleep deprivation was the most fascinating of tortures to inflict upon the mind and body.

Starvation was interesting, true, and water-boarding was curious in its moments of panic, but sleep deprivation was (in his humble opinion) the most beautiful to watch of them all.

It is incredible to watch the mind deteriorate, untouched by drugs and physical abuse. Bit by bit, piece by piece, it loses its grip with reality and, slowly but surely, begins to spiral downwards.

There are some that fight it. Some that are incredible at fighting it.

But Albert Hirsch knows that you can only fight yourself for so long before you lose.

He enjoyed working with David Webb. He enjoyed having victims with which there were no bounds to how far he could stretch them, push their brains and bodies until they just gave up.

Before he had been chief psychologist of Treadstone, Albert had worked exclusively with black-ops on...specialized...interrogation techniques.

The truth is, Albert loathes physical torture. Often he finds it unnecessary and unneeded; people forget that the human body is an incredible, ever-adapting organism. You cannot snuff out rebellion with cutting digits or electrocution. Those methods are archaic, and –most importantly– don't always work.

But the mind doesn't adapt as well as the body. It is far more complex than the body and, in that step, far more fragile. You just need to know which legs are the most fragile on a table to start breaking them off. Whether or not it wants to, then, the table will collapse.

That's what Albert told black-ops. They didn't necessary like it (or him) but they heeded him because of what he showed them. What he forced them to watch.

They were scared when Dr. Albert Hirsch showed them one of their companions after sixty-three hours without sleep.

And he enjoyed that.

Some part of Albert would find it ironic that, after all his work, all his studies and examinations of his patients well-being that some of them wouldn't follow through like they were created to.

Jason Bourne –David Webb– is one of these fine examples.

He was supposed to kill Albert, wipe him off the earth and save him the trouble of doing it himself. Albert's brains were supposed to be dripping onto the linoleum floor in the florescent-lit confines of his office, and he was supposed to be spared from all the trouble that would follow after Bourne left (or died).

Albert Hirsch does not regret what he did. And he never will.

But Albert Hirsch understands that he is no longer safe, and that his practice will no longer fly under the radar.

He will not be exempt from punishment.

Albert Hirsch is sitting in solitary confinement in a grungy prison outside New York City.

And Albert Hirsch...Albert Hirsch is having trouble sleeping.


	8. Payback: Pamela Landy

It's about time that she actually surprised him, he who slips through security like a ghost, can vanish into crowds in the blink of an eye and has the annoying tendency to catch her when she's at her most vulnerable.

But Pam has done it.

Seated at the tiny circular table in her kitchen, the _New York Times _sprawled in front of her (the cover screams about the now-called Kramer Scandal, with her name quoted more than a few times), Pam glances up from her cup of (decaffeinated) coffee and motions for David Webb to sit down.

There is, after all, a cup of coffee already waiting for him.

"I had a feeling you were coming," she says calmly at his very well hidden but still perceptible look of surprise.


	9. Homeland: David Webb

After two months of recovery (bones mending painfully, scar tissue welling up on his forehead, neck, back and muscles carefully realigning themselves) David Webb sits in the (discreet) hospital bed and tries to understand where he's going to go.

The mission is over, the objective completed. He has his memory now, his body and mind working in sync for the first time in more than three years.

He has guilt and he knows where it comes from.

He has happiness and he understands that, too.

He has dread and rage and yet now those emotions don't frighten him.

And he has memory – his biggest hope and fear of them all.

David Webb slowly puts on his jacket with the help of the doctor and slips him ten-thousand dollars.

The man glances down at it, then back up at Webb and shakes his head, slicing the wad of money in half and handing the rest back to David.

"I know who you are," the doctor says, "and what you have done. Consider this thank you from us."

'Us' may mean many people, but David doesn't ask the man to elaborate. He thanks him, listens to his instructions as to what he can and cannot do (David might heed the doctor's orders, might not depending on what he's doing and how he's feeling) and then slowly walks out from the aid station beneath the city and into the early dawn hours of a New York spring.

It is brisk, winter still clinging desperately to New York for as long as possible, but the interior of the taxi is warm, even if it reeks of cigar smoke. The driver (an Iranian immigrant, eyes sharp and alert) peers at him over a bushy mustache and waits (somewhat impatiently) for a response.

David remains mute for a moment, considering.

Finally:

"JFK, please."

The man nods, puts the car into drive.

And it is then (when David arrives at the airport, stepping out and handing the man fifty-dollars) that he knows what he is going to do.

He waits in line for an hour, but when David reaches the check-in counter, he informs the clerk that he wishes to book an immeadiate flight to Missouri.

The woman at this desk narrows her eyes, trying to recognize where she's seen his face (on the news, she doesn't know that yet) but doesn't ask any questions. He gives her the fake i.d., nudges the glasses further up his nose, and she types the information in quickly.

She asks for his money (which he gives to her graciously) and then hands him his ticket.

David Webb gets on a plane to St. Louis, Missouri and begins to prepare.

He's going home, now.

* * *

**A/N: **So I thought I'd call this the end. Any suggestions for more characters, or is calling this the final chapter fair? 


	10. Part II: The Dead

**PART II: **

**The Dead**

_"Did you ever dream they were alive, those whom you miscall as dead?"_

_Sophacles' _Electra


	11. Neighbors: Jarda

**A/N: **I owe most if not all of this next section to a recommendation by **lazaefare**, who suggested that I take a look at the dead operatives of Treadstone and Blackbriar after Bourne killed them. It's an interesting premise that I didn't originally think of, so I thought I'd throw it out there. After _Supremacy, _maybe after _Ultimatum_, too. I think it kinda ties in to what I originally planned, so let's see how it goes. (If I don't like it, I'll set it aside as its own story. Tell me what you think.)

And to all you fabulous reviewers, **Jelly **and the ever-present **Darlian--**thank you.

And **Darlian?** Yes, I think I'll add a little blurb later as to the convo between Pam and David. Maybe as a part three. :D

* * *

There was a woman, who lived next to a man in flat number 26N.

They were good acquaintances. Not exactly friends, not exactly strangers, they lived in apartments next to one another and conversed regularly.

He was not a striking man, but she thought he was good-looking all the same.

She was not an attractive woman, but he said that she could certainly catch eyes if she tried.

When snow came, he offered to shovel her sidewalk, and when he was gone on trips (the woman thought that this was quite often, maybe too often) she took care of newspapers and watered the plants on the porch step.

She was there when his apartment exploded, ripped from the inside out, his lawn showered with glass and blood and the flowers on his porch nonexistent.

They told her that it was an accident – a gas leak – but she knew the man was too careful for that.

Someone killed him, this nice man who lived next door and shoveled her sidewalk when the winter came.

She moved away before maybe they could come for her. 


	12. Sister: Desh Bouksani

**A/N: **To those who didn't recognize the name, Jarda was the German Treadstone operative killed in _Supremacy. _These next ones -- hopefully -- should be relatively easy to recognize. Desh is _Ultimatum_, the Professor and Castel are waaaay back in _Identity. _

Enjoy. :)

* * *

If Rachid Sanjari was to be completely honest with you, he would've told you that the man who rented from him was an asshole.

Rachid never liked him – he was too spooky, too rude and when Rachid came to pick up rent at the end of the month, the man's eyes staring out from behind the door bothered him too much. He never laughed, never smiled; children would dare one another to run by his flat and see if the monster came out to glare at them and (to the most extreme) maybe speak in his monster-voice.

He glared. He peeked out from behind his door.

But he never spoke.

Nonetheless...there is some part of Rachid that breaks when he is asked to identify the body in the morgue. He goes down those steps, finds himself alongside a young woman who introduces herself as Desh Bouksani's sister.

The mortician pulls back the sheet.

And then Rachid Sanjari is holding a screaming, sobbing woman in his arms.

...Bouksani was an asshole.

But even then, Rachid feels something in him crack when this woman keens, barely able to hold herself up.


	13. The Pianist: The Professor

His students referred to him as Professor, and only Professor.

There was no last name, no first. There was a man with glasses and steely eyes who worshiped the metronome like it was a God -- but he was only the Professor.

Or, rather, Professor.

Checks were made to him, children were taught the piano with a discipline some considered almost military and music was made.

His best students were only given Beethoven after they proved they could handle Mozart. Handel, Bach and the organ and the elusive Mendolsohn. Czerny was a must, and Hanon was considered almost-always mandatory.

Brahms was only for the best and then (this only happened once) afterwards, Rachmaninoff.

A teenage girl got Rachmaninoff.

The Professor was only there for half of her concert.

A young child-prodigy named Josef received Brahms.

The Professor was only there for a quarter of his concert.

Josef and the teenager girl, Natalie, were related by blood. They were cousins.

Natalie did not know why her teacher left. Nor did her cousin.

But suddenly there were no more lessons, no more visits and the dark-eyed man with the metronome was no longer there.

Like he had vanished.

Like he never existed.

Natalie and Josef missed the Professor.

Even though, sometimes (for he was never a really kind man, though an excellent teacher and mentor he certainly was) they didn't know why.


	14. Fangs: Castel

The little girl didn't like the man on the scooter.

He passed by their house every day on his way to work (wherever THAT was), occasionally glancing over at her Papa seated outside, but the little girl didn't like him.

There was something feral about him. Something scary. Papa would read her books about monsters and without a second's pause he would be in his head, black eyes and squinched face something of a bad memory.

He tried smiling, once, when she was out with her Papa.

She could've sworn she saw fangs.

Word came around that a man fell out from a third-story window and died.

Papa would tell her it was the man on the scooter.

...she never told him how strangely relieved she was.


	15. Part III: Truth

**Part III: Truth**

_"The truth that makes men free is, for the most part, the truth which men prefer not to hear."_

-Herbert Agar


	16. Conversations and Coffee

There is a conversation they begin to have as Pamela Landy sips at her coffee and David Webb eyes her and the cup in front of him warily.

She's not sure who initiates it, who takes the first lunge and braces for the first parry, but suddenly it begins.

"Decaffeinated?" he asks her.

One word, five syllables, seven consonants and six vowels.

But it's conversation.

She shakes her head.

"For me, yes."

A raised eyebrow from him.

And then Pam falls back into it, the silent chess board which the ex-protagonist and antagonist wage their war.

They're both very good at this game.

But it's time to see who will win.

"I thought you'd be coming in from a long drive," she elaborates to him. "Might need some caffeine to keep you awake the rest of the way."

This translates literally into a question of: _where the hell did you go_? but they know that asking that would be breaking the rules of their game.

So then he makes his move.

"Yeah."

One word, one syllable, two vowels and consonants.

Webb finally reaches forward and picks up the cup, taking a sip himself.

The cup goes back down with a click.

And then he elaborates.

"I went to Missouri," he says.

She watches him for a moment, waiting for more, then realizes that that's it.

Her turn.

"So you remember."

Statement. But question, too.

A nod from him, accompanied by a brief flicker of a smile.

"Yes."

It would explain a lot to her – how the hair has morphed from brown to blond (obviously not naturally) and how the glasses he perches on his nose make him seem more human.

When he didn't know who he was, he clung to the black-on-black attire, the brown hair and the blue eyes almost adamantly. It was all he had, all he knew – a physical identity that defined him as _him. _

But now he knows more, and he can break away from what he was. Bourne is still there, hiding behind the eyes, but someone else resides in that body, too.

His turn.

"How's the shoulder?"

He means the not-so-discreet bandaging on Pam's right shoulder, hidden beneath the shirt.

He's talking about the bullet-wound she received a week ago.

She'd known that she wouldn't have fucked over her superiors and gotten away with it – it had been painfully clear from the second she slipped the files into the fax machine and turned to Vosen, eyes defiant.

She'd known it when she stood before Congress and testified about the so-called Kramer Scandal.

And she knew it when the black GMC began to tail her and Cronin in the car, heading back to the hotel.

They weren't discreet about it, they weren't brash about it, but they were coming for her.

Tom did well under the circumstances, considering. The two hadn't been in the field in over seven years (for Pamela it was nine), but he doggedly dodged through traffic and bounced from highway to side-street to alley for as long as possible, trying to keep them in heavily populated areas.

Sure, it slowed down their escape, but it made it so that shooting the Volvo would become out of the question.

Eventually, though, they forgot that the enemy had the tendency to come in more than one number. As their tail suddenly vanished, another black Yukon abruptly screamed out from one of the intersections heading back towards the Hill and slammed into the passenger's side of the car, sending them spinning.

Even now, Pam wasn't sure how she wasn't knocked unconscious – the force of the impact was such that glass sprayed and her entire body felt like it had been dislocated. The world flickered, collapsed, and metal crumpled all around her but she didn't black-out. And Tom – bleeding, clutching the gun in his hand awkwardly and fumbling with his seatbelt – didn't either. Instead, they managed to stagger out of the wreckage and tried (tried was the operative word) to get away from the car as fast as possible, moving towards the police sirens and away from the black Yukon they knew was waiting for them, engine idling somewhere nearby.

They got to the police car only to realize it wasn't the police, and later (after Pam twisted in the grip of one, went straight for his eyes and proceeded to get an elbow in her throat) began to understood that they were going to die.

Tom had a six-year old son, a three-year old daughter and a wife at home.

Pam had this – her career, her life and the truth.

They didn't want to die.

It took two cracked rips, three broken fingers, a black eye and a shot to the shoulder to fight her way out of it.

For Tom, it was a broken leg, two shots to the chest and a broken nose.

But they made it.

"It hurts," Pam says after a long moment.

Webb is expressionless.

"Your partner?"

"Recovering." she looks at him full-on, then, and says matter-of-factly: "Most of us have a rather slow recovery-rate."

She's talking about his resiliency and the fact that Tom and her were desk jockeys for a good seven, eight years. She's telling him that not everyone can function with a bullet in their shoulder, eight-hours of sleep in over forty-two hours and a fractured femur.

He understands, and again there's that flicker of amusement. It vanishes, though, at her question.

"How'd you survive the fall?"

He blinks, eyes shuttering over into that icy, dead look for the briefest of seconds before it vanishes.

"I don't know," he says honestly. "I just did."

It's a fair enough answer – brief and to the point, informing her that even he doesn't know how he survived a ten-story fall – and in the awkward silence that follows, they both understand that they're nearing the end of this peculiar talk.

Pam gets up from her chair, taking the newspaper and throwing it in the trash, before turning around and carefully (it hurts to walk) coming back to her seat.

There is something on the borderline of admiration and empathy floating in David Webb's eyes as she sits down.

Pam ignores it and instead kicks off their conversation.

"Where are you going now?"

David's brow furrows, and the one hand he had on the cup backs off and fidgets on the table, drumming the surface silently.

Finally, though: "Goa," he says. "I want to see Marie."

All the puzzle pieces are back, but now the puzzle has to be put together.

She can only hope the best for him.

So she does.

"Good luck," she tells him.

"Thank you," he replies.

They both rise, but David takes her cup (it's empty, and he's right in assuming that she's not going to have anymore) with his and walks over to the sink, placing them in.

It's a very human gesture, and Pamela doesn't quite know if she should be amused or frightened that the super-assassin is helping her with dishes.

He turns back around, walks back to his seat and picks up the backpack lying next to his chair.

The two evaluate one another again before Pam takes a step forward and motions for him to follow her to the door.

"How is my security?" she asks him as they reach the front door and she notes the green light flashing on her system.

There's that ghost of a smile again.

"Good." he says. "Most people won't be bothering you."

She shoots him a look as a response but says nothing, instead opening the door and taking a step out. He tails her, then stops when they're both on the front porch, looking out at the forest and flowers that surround her house.

They regard each other again, but it's David who makes the move, sticking out a hand.

"Thank you," he says, "for everything."

She takes the hand, shakes it firmly, and nods as she replies.

"Thank you."

His eyes go cold for a minute, the grip on her hand suddenly painful.

"You almost died," he says.

She nods again. "But it was worth it."

His brow furrows at this, eyes considering, and then lets go, bringing his arm to his side.

Another long pause. An awkward pause. They glance at each other again, not quite sure how to finish off this odd meeting, and then David starts to walk off, moving down the drive.

Halfway down, though, he stops.

"Be safe, Pam," he tells her. "And you might want to change where you put your house key."

Pam shoots a sideways glance towards the petunias hanging near her head, and then looks down at the ground below them.

A spatter of dirt is what greets her.

Pamela Landy can't see David Webb, but in the distance, she swears she can hear him laughing.

* * *

**A/N: **I personally think it's out of character and lame, but I'm one of those fanatically self-deprecating writers. So I guess it's up to you readers to give me the whole truth and whatnot. 

Is this the end? Should it be? Up to you, dearest reviewers.

By the way...

**Darlian, **you are a dear,

**lazaefair, **you crazy pianist whose name I terribly butchered, I'm so glad you enjoyed these and

**Jelly, **thanks for your anonymous yet continuous reviews. Certainly appreciated.

Enjoy, and please give me your best crit.


	17. Author's Note

**A/N: ...**okay, so I lied a little bit. I thought this was the end, but realized that I forgot (courtesy of **Speakfire**) Irena Neski.

She's just a little important to the story. But I know that this one is very done, with an ending very much in place.

So here's what's gonna happen: new story, same premise. Short, sweet, and simple.

Irena Neski has her own one-shot. Please enjoy. Should be up to day.

And to **lazeafaire, **(ha! I spelled your name right), **Anton Ego, critical smoke, Onora** and dear **Darlian: **

Thank you so much for your reviews. I'm so happy you enjoyed this. Really, I am.

Alright. Now go and read the one shot and see if it's okay.

Much love,

LF/Energetic Beaver/LaFEB


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